Messages

So like... something like this? (Incomplete, there's a lot of stuff that I haven't studied.)

Sorry the lack of reply, I was kind of busy.

I'll send it to earth to see if that's what he wanted. Thanks a lot!!!

Good news!

The person that made the script format (earthdarkness) is back, so I'll share this infor with him, he'll find it really useful:).

Btw, about the big text, which function is the one that draws it on the screen????  How does it work?

I'm asking because we wanted to change it from 2byte reading to 1byte per char reading as it had been done with the normal text.

Well, yes.... That is basically it. THUMB is cut-down ARM. However, I usually say ARM for 32-bit instructions, and THUMB for 16-bit instructions. (Kind of how it is labeled in VBA's Tools>Disassemble...)

So that area is where the functions are stored is that right? As in, each call in the control codes refer to the functions in that place you pointed out.

Well, kind of indirectly. I guess you can kind of think of it like a tree, but the root/parent functions for the control codes/commands aren't in this area. (However, they may call some of these functions, may need to check into that.)
In what I posted, I was going through the code to list what looked like functions that can be called. (Generally.) Usually they're easy to tell because most functions (not all) are nested in push and pop instructions.

As normmatt explained us, at least one DrawCharacter is called to draw normal text, while the other is called when the text box contains BIG characters (if you play the game, just the first text to show up will have a bigger font and be displayed in the middle of the screen)

Maybe. What I read from a quick read of the code /seemed/ to contradict your statement (at least at first)... But until I have figured out where everything is. I can't say whether I've misread or not... While Summon Night's code seems easy to read (compared to some games), I do make mistakes....

08001F14 calls
- 08003BC0
- 08003EB8

080020A8 calls
- 0800348C then 080041C8
- 080043E4 (at end)

I see, thanks for the explanation! Glad it's not as hard to read as other functions! That's a slight relief :P

Are there only like ~two ARM functions in this game (and the rest is THUMB.) or am I missing something?


---
@What do you say?
Sure, I guess.

---

@Next post: Thanks! I've added them, but I need to figure out those others in the area...

08001D0C = Stores table addresses to RAM.
03002970 | 08BDA40C 098C8D9C 09718FFC 094D446C 09E2261C
08001D3C = File look up(table number, index of file) ; Returns address
08001D5C = File look up(table number, index of file) ; Returns size
08001D78 = File look up(table address, index of file) ; Returns address
08001D88 = File look up(table address, index of file) ; Returns size
08001D94 =
08001D98 =
08001DC4 =
08001DE8 =
08001E14 =
08001E38 =
08001E4C =
08001E64 =
08001E70 =
08001EA0 =
08001ED4 =
08001EE4 =
08001EFC =
08001F14 = DrawString(dest, textAddr, , src_offset (16-bit), bg_color)
080020A8 = (Text related)
080022B4 = (Text related) - Alternates between calling 08003B9C and 08003BA8 for each text character. No idea if it was meant to clear character.
08002388 =
080026CC =
08002A64 =
08002CB4 =
080031E8 =
0800348C = GetCharacterAddressInFont(text character id)
0800350C =
08003620 =
08003664 =
080036C4 =
080036F8 = (Text related) Draw string? (dest?,srcText,?)
0800379C = "
08003840 =
0800393C =
08003A20 =
08003B9C =
08003BA8 =
08003BC0 = DrawCharacter(src, dest, src_offset, bg_color)
08003EB8 = DrawCharacter_0(src, dest, src_offset, bg_color)
080041C8 =
080043E4 =
080044B0 = -- From here on down - I/O stuff (Indirectly)

Those two: DrawCharacter and DrawCharacter_0... Seem like each are called alternatingly... (Every other character using one, the other "every other character" using the other? Hmm.... But as with what I have in the quote, there's clearly more stuff to look into... so...

Glad it was useful!! One question about your first statement, how you differentiatie between ARM and THUMB functions? I though THUMB was just a subset of ARM, just with 16bits instructions.

So that area is where the functions are stored is that right? As in, each call in the control codes refer to the functions in that place you pointed out.

As normmatt explained us, at least one DrawCharacter is called to draw normal text, while the other is called when the text box contains BIG characters (if you play the game, just the first text to show up will have a bigger font and be displayed in the middle of the screen)

I'm gonna addsome functions to the drive you made, these ones were identified by normmatt:

ROM:08003BC0 ; unsigned int __fastcall DrawCharacter(int src, int dest, int src_offset, int bg_color)
ROM:08003BC0 DrawCharacter
ROM:08003EB8 ; unsigned int __fastcall DrawCharacter_0(int src, int dest, int src_offset, int bg_color)
ROM:08003EB8 DrawCharacter_0
ROM:08001F14 DrawString
ROM:0800348C GetCharacterAddressInFont

One of the drawcharacter is for the normal font, while the other is for the big characters font (no clue which one's which)

Alright.. I have a tiny bit of info...

"in this case the opcode is: 16 03 01 00 18 01 00 00 83 C1 00 00 The text in this opcode is 83 C1 which is translated to your partner name. Soon after this opcode we have a 0B 03 (big text) with 83 C1 81 49 81 49 that is: (Partner name) + "!!" But when testing I only saw the :(Partner name) + "!!", when the character summons him/her. I didn't see the summon name by it self as the 16 03 opcode is sugesting. That opcode is kinda weird, maybe this opcode will need some brute force search. t's not like there is much text in that opcode format. About all of it is or user created names and or '!' and or '?'. The only thing we need to take a look is that player name + 'Da'(japanese) + '!'. I think its the only of those 16 03 opcodes we might need to change. Do you have any clue to why a japanse would put a 'Da' after a name? (maybe something we need to translate)

When I looked at the code on this, it looked like this command (0316) is for getting the number of characters in the text string.

0316 EXPR TEXT
EXPR = Refers to where in memory to set the number of characters in text to.
TEXT = The text to check (Using CX83 will read from the text variables)

Does that make any sense?

I think it does make sense for this control code.

It's not like there is much text in that opcode format as earth said. I think we can leave it like that. What do you say?

You are welcome. Still got to document the other commands, though. = Hopefully I can get at least half of those in this month. (?)

Sounds good. I also have it in my Hacking Docs folder. (Misc. Docs link in my signature.)

That'll be most helpful! thanks fox

Meanwhile I'll keep working on the graphic task.

Yeah, sounds like a good way to go... Especially if we ever want those tools to be used for more than just translating...
As for the script table? I am not sure exactly what that refers to, but I don't imagine it to be a problem? (Re-pointing is easy if you got the space. Right?)
(A bit random, but I kind of hate Python when it comes to file management. C# does a pretty good job, though.)

I've already started documenting. The document is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/19HGbHkmIUfvd7fc0_gEpcuAjtwagtr7HpLv2dwE5jPg/edit
It it is to list most of the functions in the game. (Functions being the code blocks that were intended to be called.)

This is just the start, and there's a long way to go. But it's nice seeing the first section (0000+) only has a small number of commands.

0000 = Unused (Pointer is 00000000)
0001 xxxx xxxx EXPR = Set var to EXPR (xxxx=Type (2/3) , xxxx (2nd) =Index)
0002 xxxx EXPR = Conditional jump (in script) if EXPR=0.
0003 xxxx = Simple Jump
0004 = Related to ending script?
0005 EXPR = Loads PSI3 file. (Index being EXPR) Current position is not saved.
0006 EXPR = Loads/calls PSI3 file. (Index being EXPR) Current position is saved.
0007 xxxx = Function call (For same 0x1C byte entry)
0008 = Return from sub-function. (Does nothing if in main function?)
0009 xxxx = Function call? (Another 0x1C byte entry?)
000A EXPR = Sets slot EXPR (0-7) to type 0x9.
000B EXPR = Gets the on flags for the engine block EXPR (0/1)
000C = Nothing (Just returns 0 to continue script.)
000D = Sets PSI3 file id(Not sure?) to 0000, but doesn't load it? (Unknown purpose.)
000E = Unused (Pointer is 00000000)
000F = Unused (Pointer is 00000000)

In the code, these ^ are pretty much separated into two groups, interesting enough. 0001,0004-0009 in the first group, 0002,0003,000A-000D in the other group.

Amazing!! Well the dumper's ready then (i'll send you a link to a drive folder so you can post there all your findings if you want and check what we have done so far).


Nice, I'll bookmark the file to check it out throughly. I'll edit this post if I have any questions!

Oh no, you're fine. It's no problem.... This'll be very useful during research.
Was more or less saying that going forward, I will be trying to use this other way. (I might include the arguments too. though I left those out of my example.)

I see. Glad it was useful!

One question, suppose all the functions have been identified properly, I guess we'll have to code them to make a decent dumper/inserter that, in case of the dumper writes down the XML plus the japanese text, and in the case of the inserter, reads up the xml formatted text and writes down the opcodes + translated text, am I right?

of course, we'd need to take into consideration the fact that the sizes of each script will be different, and thus we'll need to modify the script table...I think that's how it was supposed to go down.

Oh cool. That's nice.

One thing, though.  It looks a bit unorganized and rushed.

I'd prefer the commands written the 16-bit way (That is the way they are written, right?).... and for them to be in order by their number... So like....

Something like below, but I'll have to work quite a bit on it....

---

General / Control Flow?
0000
0001
0002 = conditional jump, test player's gender
0003 = simple jump
0004 = End of script
0005
0006
0007 = function call

(Not sure if there are categories for 0100+ and 0200+)


???
0300
0301
0302
0303
0304
0305
0306
0307 = Set variable
0308 = Normal Text box
0309 = for text that spans 3 lines
030A
030B = Text box with large letters
030C = for one line
030D = options
030E = End
030F
0310
0311 =  Box with Title (Where will you go?)
0312 = Box without Title (just a text box)
0313 = default option (no option chose)
0314 = option (Deikle Village)
0315 = end of menu
0316
0317 = popup message: This are special text boxes that are really small and appear in the middle of the screen
0318 = wait for key press on pop up text box??

0363 = set actual place in the game's menu

037D = set name sprite
037E = set visible or invisible (portrait) Invisible are for NPC which doesn't have any portraits


???
0478 = sets portrait.
0479 = sets eye expression and mouth expression.
047A
047B
047C
047D = adds extra sprites if the portrait is wider.

Yeah, it's a bit rushed, sorry >_< they are written by how you'd find them on the script files.

Okay. Thanks! Wow. A lot to take in.

And that sounds nice. I kind of wish there was a key. (Hex values that represent each control code.) I'll probably get them as I document the game code. (Depending on how much time I devote to it.) ; (Though, I guess you're working on that... if going by your posts.)

@rip/uncompress = If it is compressed in the ROM, another option is to just dig it out of the game's RAM where it is decompressed?

I have collected everything I know about how the control codes work in-game, with some examples. Also, how the script is read by the game.

Here's the file: https://www.mediafire.com/file/os9sqb59xpdbbw7/List%20of%20Hajimari%20no%20Ishi%20Control%20Codes.txt

Okay. Thanks! Wow. A lot to take in.

And that sounds nice. I kind of wish there was a key. (Hex values that represent each control code.) I'll probably get them as I document the game code. (Depending on how much time I devote to it.) ; (Though, I guess you're working on that... if going by your posts.)

@rip/uncompress = If it is compressed in the ROM, another option is to just dig it out of the game's RAM where it is decompressed?

if it's useful, the uncompressed script inside the gba are stored at 0x02006000 which is in the WRAM. Some control codes were documented with their hex value, once I'm done I'll share them.

Well, any work to bring the translation project 1 step closer to finishing is good work.... (Even if it's minor.)

Sounds good. Where might I find the most updated English script, anyway?  Not too familiar with PSI3 files, but I'll look at them. I think before I was studying system related text (Uncompressed)... But all that is nice to know.

The most updated english script is here: https://github.com/salixa/SNSC3-Translation

As you can see, it's formatted differently because some progress was made in identyfying the control codes. Alas I don't have all the info available.

Arount here, page 5-6 there's some tools to rip and uncompress the english script, using a C function first and passing the scripts through DSDECMP

I should probably look into this again.

Would be fun if I could find a way to make it use Golden Sun's text compression!

Just remember, I make *no promises*, though.... Esp. since that last time I looked at it (years ago),.... it turned out I didn't make much progress...  I forget if we documented any of the code or not. So I'll need to find those addresses again. - It'll likely be a complex task...


@Script = So do we have it in a text document? One line per index? (If the game does it by index? Forget. Edit: Oh yes, you have it one per file by address... went to the link in the earlier post.) I know that lines can have funny stuff going on in them, though. But I'll need to think what's actually needed in the event /all/ the text is being compressed at the same time. (And with the possibility of modifying the code.)


For now, I will just look... then decide if I'll do anything a bit later.


---
I think I'll document the functions.... There's likely going to be a lot of code editing(?) if this goes through?
And with the compression format theory, you don't really have to go to 8-bit char... could keep it 16-bit. (Maybe, at least with a slightly modified version of the compression format.) ... Since that's what would be in the char trees... where-as, the text data would be variable bits. (In theory.) ; But I think I'm interested in making it 8-bits when it is in the char trees... should I ever have a decent enough plan....

That would be definitely useful fox! Hopefully your try yields good results this time.

As a reminder of where we are right now: the script is currently compressed using LZ77, and it's made of PSI3 files or varying lengths. Each of this script files have a subset of different control codes, that tell the game how to show the information (portraits, type of text box, if the dialogue branches etc) A lot of them have been identified and I'm doing my best to document them, it will take a day or two though. It's not a complete list but I'm sure it'll be useful too.

Hey everyone! sorry for necro bumping this post again.


I'm still working on Hajimari no Ishi, and while we made a LOT of progress translating the script, we need help inserting it back into the rom.

Hopefully Aent is not busy enough to help us back, or another person with similar hacking knowledge.


Thank you!

how to toggle debugging on/off on vba sdl h?????

Hmm... Interesting? So those images make it look like he has already made the font arrangement/swapped to 8-bit.... But I guessing he never released the tools on that end? (Only the extraction ones?) Or did I miss something?

[spoiler]That moment when you find out you can't keep multiple spoilers open at a time on romhacking.net.... almost makes gshc spoilers seem much better than I thought... after thinking they were tacky.[/spoiler]

exactly, dissapeared without a trace, such a shame.
They are horrible indeed. You can try contacting blackdog61, the guy can give you sound advice. for sure.

Can't say... I'm probably the only one here at GSHC ("here" applies to those that pop in regularly) to consider it...(?)  I remember looking into the code a long time ago... and I believe at some point deciding not to really work on it... for some reason? Could have been due to how time consuming it might have been(?) (Not sure of its difficulty level...)

VWF = ???

I take it that http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=2488.msg44352#msg44352 is still the latest update?

While one method /might/ be to have the 8-bit chars be indexes to a 16-bit char table... (In some way... while noting char pairs...) It's probably better to just go straight to 8-bit chars and update the font..? I um... Not know how difficult that is... sso may need to look it up. What tool was being used to import the text again? https://github.com/wangds/sncsm3 This one? (I think it was obsolete?)

And if I'm lucky... (Assuming I jump back in this? Haven't quite decided.) ...perhaps I will see about putting the GS Text Compression in the game.... But anyway.. It's probably unlikely that I'll do that... especially since compression might not be necessary... But you never know.


Edit again: Either way, I'm in no rush... and will hypothetically-speaking be months until I would show progress if I do.(?) ... so assume I've filled in no positions...

VWF = Variable Width Font

I use the gbatemp thread, but this one has information from Aent. He made exactly the same attempt, but dissapeared and never reported back (his mail's saviorkross@hotmail.com, but no idea if you will contact him, i couldn't at least) he made a tool to get the script:

as far as things goes i think that aent taking care of the hacking part as he must be decyphering the missing opcodes. that is an useful part. as you say now we need to find a way to make the script fit.

I've been working on it on and off in my spare time, but I am pretty new to all this. That tutorial you posted was quite helpful so my thanks to whomever wrote it and to you for posting it.

Ideally I want to break the limit of the current text blocks(PSI3 segments which is what is shown in my last post) so we can have a fuller translation. As it is now, each text block links to the others either by an index number to an array of pointers or a pointer of it's hex location. Still investigating that. If for instance, you take one segment, say the mine entrance right after the intro, and replace it with another. As soon as you leave after fighting VE it will warp you to the new location instead of the mine. In my case it was from there to the shop in the first town. If I walked out of the shop then, it took me outside into the town as it normally would. This tells me that the locations that they lead to aren't linked to the current text blocks location in the game file. If we were to pull out all the text blocks, put our full translation in and put them back in, they would run out of room. Sort of like putting 4 rectangles where 4 squares are supposed to fit. The way to fix this is put them in as normal and once we run out of room for the next one to fit, move it to free space and adjust the pointers as needed for all the text blocks. With luck it will be some sort of array, but I'm not sure honestly. I have located a value that if changed links to various locations and battles but more investigating is needed. As for the max rom space issue of 32mb, I'm not sure how close we'll come to that. I forget how much free space was said in the other thread. Something like 280kb? I'll have more on that situation soon I hope.

Download here.
I'm gonna include the program I use to dump the text blocks as well as a .bat file to use with DSDecmp. Just unzip to a folder with "sn3.gba" in it.(without the quotes). Doubleclick dumptexts.exe and it will dump the encrypted texts to the folder "output". Their names will be in the form of "decimal_hex". Then, with DSDecmp.exe in the original folder, doubleclick dsdecmp_folder.bat and it should make a folder called output_dec. Those will be the decompressed ones as shown in my last post. They include the original script, events, etc, albeit in a fairly unreadable form except for the actual script. For those of you who wish to see the code of dumptexts.exe, it's in src. You'll need GCC to compile most likely. I plan to include any programs/tools I create and their source as I don't want my progress for better or worse to be lost if something beyond my control should happen, lol. Beware I have some experience with C, but am certainly no expert and use google quite often.

If any questions/comments/tips/criticisms, etc I'll try and be more active here to see them. I can't promise I'm the answer to what you've been looking for, but I'm willing to try and help, lol. My apologies for the late response as well as the text-wall.


p.s. Offsets.txt will be created as well. It's just a list of all the starting locations of the compressed segments in hex. Also, not all the txt files will be story dialogue. Some are just empty rooms or lead to battles and such. Also, some might be two different parts of one location. For instance, in the first game I had one for the intro dialogue and one for map items. ("...may..." cutscene for the dialogue and in a separate text for picking up the entrance ticket as well as the placement and teleport location of the stairs)

Yeah, updating the font will be best too since it's too big.

Thanks for the reply though, hope it's not hard as it seems to be.

Edit: Here's aent latest progress before disappearing:

http://oi58.tinypic.com/jsk5yu.jpg
http://oi61.tinypic.com/28jcdgi.jpg

For example, 0x8260 used to give us the character 'A'. Now, just 0x60 produces the same character so we save a fair amount of space for adding in the translation. Another thing to notice is the gaps between letters. This will have to be repaired with a variable width font when the time comes. That will most likely be one of the last things I do.

Anyone interested in helping with some ASM stuff for hajimari no ishi? I'm looking for someone that can change the sjis to ascii  ( so that each char occupies 1 byte instead of 2). Also a VWF to help that change.

[A bit of story - Translation]

This is still going!

This thread will be used to give an update on the translation of this game. The old thread had a lot of outdated information and broken links, so I decided to make a new one with the latest patch and information available.

A bit of story - Translation

As far as it goes, the translation had it's problems since the beginning: translators and hackers leaving with a half unfinished job were the most common.
Two years ago, the project was revived by oil_ who made a site the translation:

http://sntranslation.vacau.com

A lot of people did contribute to it (kind of an open translation) though some parts of it still bother me a bit (some stiff translations, untranslated lines, etc). Luckily, another user is making a TLC and proofreading, so when I receive the polished version I'll post it. Meanwhile, here's the current version of the script: https://github.com/wangds/sncsm3/blob/master/resources/scriptTXT.7z

Hacking the game

Well, that's all about the translation so far. The hacking front wasn't as lucky as the other one, but some progress has been made since oil_ left:

Graphical front: following parakarry's footsteps, ghanmi could make use of their awesome skills and translated some graphics:





Though some of them are still missing:

+Select Hero:
+Select Partner:
+"Tsushin" (Link) in-menu graphic
+"Omake" (Extras) in-menu graphic
+Similar in-menu graphics in Engrish that may need fixing
+Fishing tutorial:
+Names in Credits

and some minor problems:

+Title screen, third and fourth options: I messed up inserting one of the four frames for "2P" ("tsushin/link" option, the graphic probably needs to be redone) and didn't touch omake "bonus".
For those two I'll need to use the no$gba debugger to move the sprites anyways removing the gaps for a proper translation.
+Opening lines not fixed yet to use the proper translation ("a land called paradise"). This should be possible (called "a paradise land" once). The wording is awkward because of tiles repeating and imposing draconian limitations on the thing, but it should be possible if the tilemap is modified.
+The glow effect doesn't match the crude shitty new English logo. It needs heavy tile map reworking.

All the NPC and character's grahpics were translated. I'll try searching for the missing ones, but if someone wants to help it could be good too. Here are some files which will be useful:

Parakarry's old files: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/3ltu3ztzon6t7/patch


Script front: This one's the most difficult so far. For what I gathered asking the process involve finding some opcodes of the game (pointers that indicate what the game has to do, example load V.E's portrait, wait for user's input to advance, etc). Luckily, another user from the last thread, Earthdarkness, has decided to lend us a helping hand making tools that can overcome the character limits of each line. We'll have to wait for their input on the tools, but im sure it will be done.

About the system messages, Ritchburn's tools did provide a good help to translate things like weapons, items. So far the progress in that front is:

Weapons: 100% translated (with each weapon's description).
Items (includes equipables, imbue, recovery, ores): 100% translated.
Quest Items (99% translated; did find a problem with some of them, more on that in a while).
Magic: 100% translated. (even the guardian beast special attack).
Special Skills: 100% translated.
Bestiary: 100% translated (proofreading could be awesome).
Boss data: 90%
Other system messages:~50% Translated.

The process involved a lot of trial and error, so I left it kind of unfinished. Also there's certain problems I found with some messages:

• One of them is a boss which [spoiler] should have the same name as the main character, same as with your partner[/spoiler] I found no way to assing it. If someone could look that one up, it could be awesome.
  
• In the same way, one system message goes roughly like: (Guardian) smithing rank is now (Option1) (in runes: (Guardian)鍛冶ランクが(Option1)になりました) where (Guardian) means the type of weapon (sword, axe, spear, fist, drill, bow) and (option1) is the rank (Usually 1, 2 or 3).
  

If anyone could help me and take a look at them, It'd be useful too.

The patch

Here's the latest patch released:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/l1suy7m816i8sm5/sn3gba_graphic+menus_v0.6_Jrombase.ups

it includes the graphics done by ghanmi and some of my translated system messages.

Credits:

translation:
macaronron
salixa
X_Wings
xswordcraftx
cyan
haruka-123
Zynk
Akiron
Chronomoogle
TheZu
gangrelion

hacking
Ritchburn
Aent
TLZ
Earthdarkness
Ghanmi
and everyone else involved I may have forgotten, lol.

Contact

PM me or send a message to pablofernandez409@hotmail.com , I'd strongly advice NOT to use the sntranslation chatroom as the site is totally outdated.

Updates

soon.